From: [v--d--t] at [twain.ucs.umass.edu] (Sol Lightman) Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs Subject: The War On Drugs and the Case For Decriminalization Date: 4 Jul 1993 14:59:59 GMT The War On Drugs and the Case For Decriminalization Copyright 1992 by Steven Meinrath During the recent presidential debates the candidates were asked a surprising question. Given the utter failure of the War On Drugs and, given the endorsement of the notion by such noted liberal thinkers as William F. Buckley, Jr. and George Schultz, would any of the candidates ever consider taking any steps in the direction of decriminalizing drugs? Not surprisingly, the answer was no. The fact that the question was even asked in such a forum is a measure of the degree of respectability the issue has gained in recent years. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The first time I wrote to urge the decriminalizing of drugs was in 1978 while a probation officer in San Francisco. Although I fully expected to become a pariah at the Probation Department, I found a surprising degree of support for my position among my colleagues. Since that time the ranks of those urging the repeal of all criminal penalties for personal drug use has grown each year. For those of us in particular who work in the criminal justice system and are confronted daily with the horrendous results of the War On Drugs, the notion that we need to take an entirely new approach to drug abuse resonates well. Of course, this is not a universally held belief. A large number of people, an entire industry in fact, profits immensely from the huge amount of money taxpayers spend each year on efforts to suppress the drug trade. Others support the current prohibition on these substances for a variety of other reasons. But for an increasing number of criminal justice professionals, drug use is looking more and more like a health care issue and less like an issue that can be resolved by the criminal justice system. By far the greatest costs to society come not from the use of the outlawed substances themselves but from the fact that we have chosen to outlaw them. In a recent article in Criminal Justice magazine, the publication of the American Bar Association's section on criminal justice, Rufus King, former Chair of that section, writes that, according to National Institute on Drug Abuse statistics, deaths related to cocaine/crack in 1990 numbered 2,483 and from heroin/morphine 1,976. (King, The Unwinnable War On Drugs, Why The ABA Should Pull Out (Fall 1992) Criminal Justice at p. 10.) Taking these figures into account as well as those for all hospital emergency-room admissions which contained any reference to an illegal drug (80,355 for cocaine/crack and 33,884 for heroin/morphine), King concludes,In short, the damage done by these two most feared substances (by the substances themselves, of course, not by the warring and disruptions of the ubiquitous black market they sustain) is in the same range as spills from bicycles and household accidents. And in the entire history of drug use, no one has ever recorded an indisputable instance of death attributable solely to marijuana/hashish. (Id.) By comparison, King points out, deaths from smoking tobacco in 1990 numbered over 400,000 and from drinking alcohol over 100,000. These figures do not include drunk-driving fatalities and other under-the-influence related deaths and injuries. Critics of decriminalization respond that the fact that the damage done by legal drugs far outdistances that done by illegal drugs demonstrates that prohibition works. Remove the criminal sanctions for drug use and youUll have just as many crackheads as we now have alcoholics. There are two problems with this argument: it presupposes that the only reason the vast majority of people have never smoked crack or shot heroin is due to the fear of arrest and incarceration if they got caught; and it completely ignores the enormous "collateral damage" from the War On Drugs. If you think the drug prohibition works you should go out and campaign for the recriminalization of alcohol and for the first-ever criminalization of tobacco. But before you do, consider this: Former Surgeon-General C. Everett Koop once testified before a startled congressional committee that tobacco is just as addictive as heroin. One particularly incredulous committee-member (an equally distinguished physician, no doubt) dismissed this as poppycock and exclaimed, 'you don't see anyone out there breaking into people's houses to get money to buy cigarettes, do you?' To which the Surgeon-General replied, 'if you make it illegal, they will.' The point is, no matter how harmful the substance, attempts by government to coerce people through the application of criminal sanctions into not ingesting it carries a much greater cost to society at large than allowing individuals to choose their own poison. The whole issue of drug use is a complex one and should not be oversimplified. However, the costs of continuing the current policy, the "collateral damage" from the War On Drugs, is more than we can afford. These costs include, to name just a few, the drive-by shootings and other street level violence that results from the competition in the black market for drugs; the burglaries, robberies and thefts of all kinds by addicts forced to pay grossly inflated black market prices for the drugs to which they have become addicted; the inability of addicts, including pregnant women, to seek medical care due to the fear of being incarcerated if their addiction is discovered and the attendant costs, human and financial, of treating their drug-addicted babies; the spread of AIDS; the astronomical cost of police, prosecutors defense attorneys, probation officers, court personnel, correctional personnel (not to mention courtrooms and prisons) all of whom are employed in the futile effort to chase down, arrest, try, convict and incarcerate drug users. This utilization of judicial resources in turn imposes what is becoming an unbearable burden on the entire justice system. And, of course, volumes could be written on the price we have all paid in terms of the rights we have lost as courts and legislatures across the country, caught up in Drug War hysteria, have condoned ever greater invasions of privacy by government agents, and trampled over a myriad of well-established Constitutional protections. For those who believe in a more authoritarian society, the War On Drugs has been a convenient vehicle to achieve that end. Perhaps the most ironic argument raised against any deviation from the current path is that removing criminal penalties for drug use amounts to genocide against minority communities. This argument is made persistently by such bona fide spokespersons for the interests of minorities and the dispossessed as A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times. Tragically, this position is also taken by certain, although by no means all, politicians from the African- American community such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Charles Rangle (Dem.-New York). The tragedy is that the "collateral damage" from the Drug War inevitably hits hardest in the minority communities. Arnold S. Trebach, President of the Washington D.C.-based Drug Policy Foundation, responded recently to Rosenthal's cry of genocide by pointing out the virtual state of siege imposed on many inner-city communities as a result of the Drug War. "The constant intimidation by drug dealers and the constant suspicion by police of innocent, law abiding community residents has been an unavoidable outgrowth of the drug war." Because these communities bear the brunt of the misguided War On Drugs, they also stand to benefit the most from a more rational, health-care oriented approach to the problem of addiction. Recent studies have demonstrated that, while drug use is spread among all socio-economic groups, law enforcement efforts are aimed primarily at drug use among minorities and the poor. Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice research group, summed it up: "We treat middle-class drug use as a public health problem, we generally treat lower-class drug use as a criminal justice problem." It is time we stop pretending the criminal justice system can solve the nation's drug problem. It is time we treat all drug use as a public health problem. (Steven Meinrath is an attorney in Sacramento, California) -- The University of Massachusetts at Amherst | _________,^-. Cannabis Reform Coalition ( | ) ,> S.A.O. Box #2 \|/ { 415 Student Union Building `-^-' ? ) UMASS, Amherst MA 01003 [v--d--t] at [titan.ucs.umass.edu] |____________ `--~ ; \_,-__/ * To find out about our on-line library, mail me a message with the * pattern "{{{readme}}}" contained IN THE SUBJECT LINE. * You will be mailed instructions; your message will be otherwise ignored